On Mon, 11 Dec 2000, Ryan S. Dancey wrote:
> Let's say you want to write a d20 conversion of Vampire. You use the
> Vampire trademarks, you indicate compatibility, and you use the White Wolf
> trademarks.
[...]
> And, in the back of the book, you run a review of a Palladium RPG book
> that includes no content that could not be construed as a "fair use"
> of Palladium's copyrights and correctly notes the ownership of all
> trademarks and indicates that you are using them without permission,
> and that Palladium, and not you, is the trademark holder.
Frankly, I think this example would be much more enlightening
without outlandish examples.
Let me try a simpler, more believable one. Say I am writing a
zine. Someone has designed a D20 based fantasy system ("Faerieland")
using the OGL and D20 STL. He released an alpha version over the web
which abided by the licenses, and now after comments has a draft which
he submits for being in my zine. I include it in my zine with the OGL
and the D20 trademark.
However, I have other articles in the zine as well. Let's
say I have two other articles in particular:
(1) is a review which trashes a WotC product. It uses the WotC
trademark [correctly identified] and some quotes of text in a manner
which is perfectly legal for a review under normal conditions.
(2) is an OGL article -- this one submitted by someone who read
the alpha version of Faerieland and loved it. He submits a new
alternate character generation system for Faerieland. It abides
by the OGL, and it does not mention the D20 trademark.
All these go together into an issue of my zine and I
distribute it. Now, what happens? Can WotC sue for breach of
contract even if I only have article #1? What about article #2?
- John
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